Elite runners start the first wave of Bay to Breakers 2018San Francisco Chronicle

Coyote trots around Golden Gate parkTed Andersen, SFGATE

At least two other suicide attacks have hit Nimroz this month, including an attack April 1 that left two policemen dead in Zaranj, and another on Saturday that killed two Indian road construction engineers and their Afghan driver in Khash Rod district.

Suicide attacks in Afghanistan spiked last year, with the Taliban launching more than 140 such missions - the highest number since the radical Islamist group was ousted from power by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

In central Ghazni province, militants ambushed a patrol of Afghan and foreign troops Thursday in Gilan district, and the ensuing clash left nine Taliban fighters dead, said district chief Abdul Wali Thofan. There were no casualties among the troops.

A roadside bomb struck a Canadian military vehicle on Thursday near Spin Boldak, a town on the Pakistani border, said Lt. Cmdr Pierre Babinsky, a spokesman for NATO troops in the south. No one died in the blast, but he declined to say whether any soldiers were wounded.

The insurgency has left more than 1,000 people dead so far this year, most of them militants, according to an Associated Press tally of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials.